What to Expect When Amanda's Expecting
by TomFoolery
Summary: His wife was very even-tempered for a human. That was until the day she told him he was going to be a father. (Fluff for the sake of fluff.)


Though he privately enjoyed Amanda's smiles, her tears were a source of discomfort, not only because he disliked seeing her in pain, but also because crying was among the most vulgar of Vulcan taboos. He'd grown accustomed to his wife's humanity but no amount of profound love could completely erase decades of ingrained social custom. She'd shed a lot of tears in the recent months.

The first occasion was when he returned home from the Vulcan Science Academy to find her in the tiny garden she'd cultivated in the atrium of their house. It was nearly the early afternoon when he discovered her perched atop the short stool in the garden, nestled among the native Vulcan succulents and several Terran plants she'd managed to grow in the arid climate.

Her cheeks were flushed from the wind of the Vulcan winter and she was smiling through tears. It seemed paradoxical, like the peculiar phenomenon of Terran weather patterns that allowed for sun during precipitation.

Through their bond, he sensed a radiant joy emanating from her, and as he approached her and she noticed his presence, she knocked the stool over in her exuberance to embrace him. She didn't embrace him in the Vulcan way with her fingers in ozh'esta, but in the distinctly human way that required wrapping her arms around his neck and applying a significant degree of pressure.

 _On the day he learned he was to be a father, he also learned that human tears were an occasional side effect of happiness._

Some weeks later, she cried more tears when she vomited in their bed. The human doctor appointed to the team to care for her pregnancy explained that human hormones often caused acute nausea in gravid females, yet neither he nor Amanda were prepared for the constant sickness she experienced.

Her condition was made worse by the Vulcan climate and she had already been hospitalized twice in an effort to keep her hydrated. No medication or treatment seemed to improve her condition, and she suffered patiently until the morning that she was too weak to get out of bed to relieve herself in the lavatory.

She sobbed into his chest and soon heaved gastric juices onto his clothing as well. That morning was her third trip to the hospital. When they returned home later that evening, they spent the night together in their large bathroom: her with her head in the toilet and him gently applying neuropressure to her back in a feeble effort to provide her _any_ relief.

She cried more, and when he asked the ultimate source of her anguish, she simply said, "I love you."

 _That day, he was reminded that human frustration and gratitude sometimes resulted in tears._

Her nausea never fully went away, but soon it was joined by another experience unique to human pregnancy. Her physician also noted that the desire to eat unusual foods was another frequent occurrence in pregnant humans, and Amanda was no exception.

He awoke alone in the middle of the night and heard a loud clattering in the kitchen. He found her sitting below their food replicator with her legs crossed, holding a green vegetable of subdued color and weeping bitterly. When he made the mistake of asking after the cause of her suffering, she held out the acrid-smelling vegetable and proclaimed through hiccups, "This is _not_ a pickle."

When he asked for further clarification, she railed against the replicator's egregious deficiency in producing an adequate version of a Terran delicacy made by curing cucumbers in acetic acid. He further erred by suggesting she was being irrational.

All she said in reply was, " _I know_!" and resumed crying.

 _Her culinary yearnings would eventually extend to soy sauce, fried potatoes, pineapples, vanilla-flavored ice cream, and something called sauerkraut, but that night, he discovered that humans sometimes cried out of an awareness of their own logical shortcomings._

Two months later, she was huddled on the floor of their closet, dressed in nothing but her underclothing and the moisture cascading from her eyes onto her pale cheeks. Most of her attire was heaped into an undignified pile beside her and she cradled a dark blue gown defensively.

He sat down next to her on the floor and listened as she explained how nothing she owned fit any longer. He hadn't noticed an increase in her size until that moment when he helped her to her feet and observed the gentle slope of her growing belly.

He began trying to explain what he assumed should have been obvious: a distended midsection was an inevitable consequence of oviparous, mammalian pregnancy, therefore, it was unreasonable to expect her clothing to continue to be of appropriate size indefinitely. She glared at him.

 _That day, she explained in poorly defined terms that sometimes humans cried because they were "fat" and their husbands "said stupid things."_

During the same approximate period, she began to receive weekly injections of antibodies to prevent her immune system from damaging the fetus. He knew they were extremely painful, but she endured them without complaint.

Her anatomy was at odds with their unborn child in other ways. Humans had a higher basal body temperature and lower blood pressure than Vulcans, and as the warm season arrived on his home planet, she became confined to their house to prevent her body from overheating and harming both her and the child.

At the physician's directions, he lowered the environmental settings in their home to a frigid 20 degrees Celsius, a concession he gladly made for her health and comfort. She did not leave even to obtain medical care; the physicians began attending to her at home.

His wife had a quick and active mind and detested being idle. It was one of many things the admired about her, but also one of the things that perplexed him about her species. _Boredom_. He would have taken advantage of the opportunity to meditate and reflect, but she seemed to view it as a prison sentence.

When they first took up residence on Vulcan, she had occupied herself by tending the garden in the open-air atrium of the house. The Vulcan summer was not kind to its own photosynthetic organisms, and her Terran plants were the first victims of the hot weather.

He returned home one afternoon from a conference on Rigel to discover her in the entry hall of their house, staring from the window into the atrium. Her arms were crossed as she looked over the browned remains of the vegetation. He wasn't aware of the silent tears streaming down her cheeks until he drew next to her.

She sighed and rested her head on his arm. They stood in silence for nearly a minute until she stated, "Even the desert holly died. How does _anything_ survive on this planet?"

Before he could begin an explanation of natural selection and the evolutionary process, she stiffened and stood up more straightly. Her hands traveled to her belly and an expression of worry crossed her face. He could sense her confusion.

"Is anything the matter?" he asked, repressing his own budding anxiety.

She did not speak, but moved her hands gently down her stomach. After a few seconds, her eyes flashed and she grabbed his hand and placed it low on her midsection, to the right of the approximate location of her navel. She seemed to be holding her breath, but five seconds later he felt a distinct fluttering movement beneath his hand and a wash of relief escape from Amanda.

"Our baby is _moving_ ," she exclaimed, the sadness over the loss of her garden all but forgotten.

New tears sprung from her eyes as she looked down at the swell of her stomach. He gently placed his other hand on the side of her abdomen, attempting to feel for further fetal movement.

"I've been so worried about him," she said, grinning through her tears. "They said he should be moving by now, but I hadn't felt anything that seemed like a baby and I-"

She stopped herself at the same time he felt a harder push against his hand. She sighed contentedly.

"How can you be certain the child is male?" he asked, referring to her desire to avoid knowing the sex of the fetus prior to its delivery.

"I don't know," she admitted. "But he just _is_."

 _She taught him that day that relief could also be a source of tears._

A month later, she became plagued by a problem Vulcan females experienced during pregnancy. The child's brain had developed sufficient neural networks to begin producing sporadic, primitive emotions. The human physician explained this sort of development did not occur in the brains of human infants until approximately nine to twelve months following birth.

The Vulcan healer told them that due to the innate psionic abilities of the fetus, the random emotions it generated would be experienced by Amanda also. The healer had privately taken Sarek aside to explain that most Vulcan females viewed the struggle to subdue fetal emotions as a personal test of their mental discipline. For all her exceptional qualities, Amanda lacked the Vulcan upbringing and years of training in meditation to suppress her _own_ emotions particularly well. When coupled with the human hormones, the emotional demands of their unborn child made Amanda a force to be reckoned with.

One moment she would laugh hysterically, and the next she would scream a barrage of insults at him that would make a Tellarite blush, which would inevitably cause her to cry. Between her unpredictable rages, she cried so many innumerable tears, until one night as she cleaned the kitchen, he asked if she was still hungry.

" _You did this to me_ ," she hissed.

"I do not take your meaning," he responded.

" _This_!" she snapped, pointing to her protruding stomach.

"I had thought you wanted a child," he made the mistake of arguing.

She threw a porcelain bowl at him and he only narrowly ducked and avoided being struck in the head. Soup splattered on the wall behind him and the porcelain bowl fractured into thousands of pieces, and he felt overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the emotion radiating from his wife. It reminded him of the plak tow.

As he approached her, she howled at him in a primal way, reminiscent of a Klingon female in the throes of a mating ritual. The analogy proved oddly predictive when she attempted to bite his hand as he reached for her two forefingers to calm her.

Trying to keep Amanda's emotions from overpowering him taxed his mental abilities to their limit. As she lunged forward to bite him again, he fought a wild, fleeting, almost _maniacal_ impulse to instantly pacify her with a nerve pinch, but instead tightly clutched her face with both hands.

After several moments of meeting their minds together in so intimate a way, she collapsed into his arms and sobbed uncontrollably until she could barely breathe. He was better able to repress his own emotions once again, and they fell to the kitchen floor. He held her patiently, repositioning his right hand to her face to meld their minds again in a gentler manner.

The transfer of emotion between them was made easier by this physical contact and he found that sharing the burden of their child's developing mind gave her considerable relief. In the final months of her pregnancy, he melded with Amanda daily to help her balance her human emotions with the child's Vulcan ones, but that _first time_ , that was the first time he had ever been afraid of his wife.

 _She cried herself to sleep in his arms on the cold, stone floor of their kitchen that night, and he discovered that the tears that came from all possible emotions simultaneously were the worst ones of all._

The weather turned cooler as winter returned to Vulcan. The physicians cautiously permitted her to go out of doors between the hours of dusk and dawn for short periods, so long as she carefully monitored her body's core temperature.

Her bulk had grown so excessive that he noticed an alteration in her natural gait. She swayed awkwardly when she walked, and her feet and ankles swelled and ached when she stood for any length of time. She cried when she discovered one morning that her shoes no longer fit. Recalling her distress from several months earlier regarding her clothing, he wisely remained silent and simply returned home the next day with a larger pair of shoes for her.

That _also_ made her cry, but he had long ago determined it was illogical to speculate about the nature of her tears when she was under such physical and emotional duress.

Her physicians were unable to predict when she would begin laboring, as Vulcan pregnancies were slightly longer than human ones and despite so many advances in medicine, predicting and timing childbirth remained elusive. The child was healthy and continued to develop well, but the physicians began to disagree about how to proceed.

The child was growing so large that the human doctor questioned whether she would be able to deliver naturally and wanted to induce her labor. The Vulcan physician cautioned against this for the continued development of the baby, weighing the moderate risk to the child of a premature birth with the smaller risk to Amanda in delivering through surgical means.

Sarek greatly disliked the paradox that the healthier their child became, the greater danger Amanda faced. In the end, both doctors agreed to confine Amanda to bed and monitor her condition closely. Worry and fear were illogical, but it took considerable effort to keep them at bay in those weeks.

Further complicating matters was a necessary meeting on Coridan he'd postponed twice to stay with Amanda. The Vulcan High Council eventually formally requested that he meet with representatives of their government, and he could put the trip off no longer.

It was not customary for Vulcan fathers to attend the births of their children, but he wished to be nearby should Amanda need him. She was coping better with the child's erratic feelings, but she remained emotionally fragile and he knew birth was often a traumatic experience.

He stood in their home's atrium contemplating the logic of resigning his post when he heard the door open behind him.

"You should not be out of bed," he said.

"Well, supposedly walking can help induce labor, and I haven't slept well in three months," she said panting slightly. "And I've been waiting for you to join me."

"The High Council has requested I go to Coridan in the morning," he said after a short pause.

He expected her to cry, and while her face fell into disappointment, she nodded, walked over to him, and embraced him tenderly.

"I'll miss you," she said.

"I am considering remaining here," he explained.

"Is it because you think I can't do this alone?" she whispered.

"I only seek what is best for you and the child."

"Well, I would think you remaining employed is probably in everyone's best interest," she said with a rare display of logic he hadn't witnessed in her in months. "Besides, women have been having babies since… well, since _forever_."

"Your case is atypical," he argued.

"I agree," she admitted, wincing and rubbing her hips. "And this pregnancy has been the hardest thing I've ever done. And I know it's been hard on you too. _I've_ been hard on you."

Tears once again flowed down her cheeks and he opened his mouth to console her but she held up her hand.

"Let me finish," she interrupted, catching her breath. "I don't know that I would have gotten through this without you. I've never been more grateful for anyone in my life, and if our son grows up to be half as amazing as you, I'll be proud to call myself his mother."

"You are still convinced the child you carry is male?"

"Yes," she replied. "Besides, shouldn't simple probability tell you my odds of being right are even money?"

The winter air chilled him, but he noticed beads of sweat forming on her brow and ushered her inside. The cold temperature of their home was nearly unbearable to him, yet she stripped herself of her nightgown and complained of the heat. In the dim light of their bedroom, he fully appreciated for the first time what Amanda's small body had endured.

Her abdomen and swollen breasts were streaked with bright red marks from where her body had expanded to accommodate the child at a faster rate than her skin could tolerate. She was breathing uncomfortably and he knew that her lungs and other internal organs had become compressed as the baby grew.

She sat down and grunted. He helped her into bed and she curled up onto her left side. He lie behind her and applied neuropressure to her back to soothe the ache in her ribs and pelvis. She suddenly let out a low gasp and her body tensed but quickly said, "I'm fine. Keep rubbing. It feels good."

She eventually fell into a fitful sleep. He lie awake through the night watching her, noticing several times the ripple of the child's movement through her skin and a slight, peculiar tightening of the musculature in her abdomen which caused her to wince in her sleep.

When he left in the morning before sunrise, he softly traced his fingers over the features of her face. She moaned but did not wake; he decided to allow her to sleep. Just as he arrived at the shuttle bay on the outskirts of Shi'Kahr to board the ship that would take him to Coridan, an unpredicted electrical storm blew in from the L-langon Mountains.

They were prevalent during the winter season, but this storm in particular struck the city hard. He sought refuge underground with nearly a hundred other people and waited. Anxiety brewed within him and though he quickly tamped the current of his childish emotion, he could not entirely relieve himself of it.

He was not concerned for his own safety, but for that of Amanda and their unborn child. He could not reach her by any communication channels, but through their marriage bond he sensed her considerable distress. Their home possessed a suitable shelter for such events, one that exceeded the minimum required safety standards, but he could not be certain she reached it in time, or if it would be properly cooled enough for her special medical needs.

Like most others in the bunker, he chose to occupy the duration of his stay in deep meditation to suppress his more vestigial emotions, but was regrettably met with only marginal success.

The weather system raged for nineteen hours when it suddenly began to dissipate and then completely ended within a matter of minutes. When he emerged from the shelter, he was mildly surprised by the brilliant Vulcan sun shining overhead and a cool and gentle breeze. Were it not for the catastrophic damage it had wrought on Shi'Kahr, it might have seemed like there had never been a storm at all.

It would later be calculated as the most severe storm on the whole of Vulcan in more than two centuries, both in terms of the cost of reconstruction and the lives lost. It had arisen so suddenly that most of the populace had less than two minutes of warning to find suitable shelter. The final death toll ended at 234 and more than three thousand injured.

He wandered through the destruction of the west side of Shi'Kahr, searching for any method of transportation that would get him home, but the city was in understandable chaos. Emergency support was already rapidly arriving from other parts of Vulcan and even from other Federation planets.

It took two hours, but he eventually located an operational hover bike. He weighed the likelihood of finding the vehicle's owner to request permission for its use, and determined it was highly improbable.

So he started the hovercraft and drove off with it. When he reflected on his actions and the parameters of his predicament, it was all perfectly logical. Were the vehicle's owner a follower of logic, he or she would no doubt concur, especially as Sarek fully intended to return it and pay any sum requested in reparations.

The western part of the city had been hardest hit and it was difficult to maneuver through the debris and avoid interfering with emergency first responders. He stopped once to render aid to an elderly man who flagged him down to request transportation to an address three kilometers away, and as it was en route to his own home, he willingly agreed.

An hour later, he emerged from the eastern side of the city and passed through less densely crowded neighborhoods before finally arriving at the rural route that would take him directly home. The storm had been less severe in this area, but still punishing nonetheless.

He pushed the vehicle to a high rate of speed in the open countryside, and covered the eleven-kilometer distance to his home in exactly five minutes, thirteen seconds. He saw a gray shuttlecraft parked at an angle in his driveway and noted the roof had caved in on the southern side of the house and all of the windows had been shattered.

He willed himself to remain calm and walked briskly and purposefully through the front door and discovered Amanda's human physician packing his bag. His face was flushed and he looked quite haggard, but he smiled and said, "Oh, ambassador. I know one person who's going to be quite happy to see you. Make that _two_ , actually."

"My wife-" he began, trying to keep the tone of his voice neutral.

"Is an _amazing_ woman," the doctor finished. "She's outside on the portico. There's still no power and it's actually cooler _outside_ than it is in here. There's a pair of midwives with her now. Oh, and congratulations, it's a boy. Ten fingers, ten toes, and a pair of very Vulcan ears."

He presumed the doctor's casual inventory of his son's anatomy was a very human way of indicating he was in good health, but rather than wait for further explanation, he brushed past him down the long hallway.

He discovered her resting on the reclining couch from his study, holding their son who was swaddled in white cloth. She looked tired and was once again crying, and when she noted his presence he felt the purest sense of relief: both hers and his own.

He swiftly approached her and then slowed to sit carefully next to her. She looked from their son to him, and lovingly stroked Sarek's cheek. The midwives tactfully left them to their private moment, for which he was glad.

"Look," she insisted, a joyful smile spreading across her face as she gently caressed the baby.

The child was so new, and though "miraculous" was a term a Vulcan would never use, he could not help but marvel that he had been safely delivered from his mother during such rampant destruction. It would take months to restore Shi'Kahr, and many people throughout the city would stoically mourn for their lost loved ones in the coming weeks, but he could not find cause for mourning in this moment.

While he briefly contemplated the nature of the cycle of birth and death, building and destruction, an idea occurred to him.

"I had a thought," he began, "that we might name the child after one of Vulcan's early society builders. His name was Spock."

The name was not common in modern society, but it held a personal dual meaning. The name literally meant, "resembling half of each other's heart and soul," but was more generally translated to mean, "uniter."

"Your silence does not seem to suggest enormous enthusiasm," he added.

"No… Spock," she said, chewing her lip as she often did when she carefully considered something, before saying more decidedly, " _Spock_."

"He has your eyes," he said.

"And your ears," she laughed.

"How did you manage?" he asked.

"Well, first let me just say, _don't_ go in the storm cellar. It's _not_ pretty."

"You gave birth in the storm shelter? How did the doctor provide-"

"He wasn't here," she interrupted. "I had to do it on my own."

" _Remarkable_ ," he murmured.

"I've never been so scared in my life. I was so worried about _you_ , wondering if you'd already left the planet for Coridan or if you'd gotten caught in the storm. I was _terrified_ for the baby: it was so hot in the cellar. And I didn't know what to do, but thankfully my _body_ did."

He found her ability to naturally birth Spock extraordinary, given both the human and Vulcan physicians agreed he had grown too large. She seemed to guess what he was thinking, because she gave him an apologetic look and said, "Yeah, I thought birth was supposed to be this beautiful experience, but it was excruciating and sweaty and bloody and disgusting and left my body looking like a warzone."

"It has made you no less lovely," he replied, stroking her face.

"He was worth every bit of it." She gazed tenderly back at their son. " _Spock..._ our little boy _."_

* * *

 **Author's Note** : This story continues with _Ambassador Sarek and the Terrible Twos_.  
Summary: When a scheduling conflict leaves Sarek alone with Spock for the day, he reassures his wife that he's capable of caring for their child – after all, he's a successful diplomat with a penchant for logic and adapting to new situations. Unfortunately, he's about to learn that his son doesn't care about his credentials and toddlers are impervious to rational behavior.


End file.
